Advances in a variety of fields have created a demand for many types of new materials. In particular, a variety of chemical powders can be used in many different processing contexts. Specifically, there is considerable interest in the application of ultrafine or nanoscale powders that are particularly advantageous for a variety of applications involving small structures or high surface area materials. This demand for ultrafine chemical powders has resulted in the development of sophisticated techniques, such as laser pyrolysis, for the production of these powders.
Some of these production techniques involve flow reactions that result in the formation of the powders in a gaseous stream. To commercially exploit these particle production processes on a practical scale, the processes must be capable of efficiently producing large quantities of particles in a reasonable period of time. These large quantities of particles must be harvested from the gaseous stream in which they are produced.